Philipps-Universität Marburg FB 10: Fremdsprachliche Philologien Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Wintersemester 2013/2014 Psycholinguistic Instructor: Prof. Rolf Kreyer
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: The limits of our language are the limits of our thoughts
Julian Obenauer Lehramt English, Geschichte und Deutsch als Fremdsprache
Table of Contents I. Introduction.................................................................................................. 1 II. The Idea ....................................................................................................... 2 a) History ...................................................................................................... 2 b) Definition .................................................................................................. 4 III.
The critical reception ................................................................................ 9
a) Lingustic determinism............................................................................. 10 b) Empirical research .................................................................................. 10 IV.
Conclusion .............................................................................................. 13
Bibliography .................................................................................................... 15
I.
Introduction
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. A hypothesis, first advanced by Sapir in 1929 and subsequently developed by Whorf, that the structure of a language partly determines a native speaker's categorization of experience. (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Oxford English Dictionary) Many students and even scholars might have longed for a definition of the SapirWhorf Hypothesis (SWH) as distinct and unambiguous as the Oxford English Dictionary offers.1 However, Whorf’s academic history of reception resembles an intellectual battleground, in which a sound discussion of the hypothesis ever so often is lost in polemics between advocates and opponents of the theory: Pinker (2007) suggests that “no one is really sure how Whorf came up with his outlandish claims, but his limited, badly analyzed sample of Hopi speech and his long-term leanings towards mysticism must have helped” (p.53). On the other hand, the supporters of the SWH cherish Whorf as revolutionary and ground-breaking thinker ahead of his time (Lee, 1996; Lehmann, 1998). This split between researchers is aggravated by the lack of an explicit definition in Edward Sapir’s and Benjamin Whorf’s original texts. Linguists rather constructed the SWH after the death of the authors based on their publications, which means neither of them had the chance to defend their writings. Nevertheless, the debate about the importance and position of this theory in linguistics continues to the present. Neither cognitivists nor nativists can embed the SWH satisfactorily in their concept. In this paper, I attempt to provide a distinct definition of the hypothesis based on the original texts and supported by secondary literature, but also class it with present-day linguistics. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to examine the historical reception of this theory in order to comprehend potential misconceptions and the ambiguous position of Whorf in the linguistic domain. The SWH caused a major uproar in other scientific domains than linguistics such as psychology, anthropology and philosophy. However, the wide-ranging implications of this hypothesis on other academic fields can merely be indicated. The focus will be the repercussions of the SWH on linguistics. Even though Joseph suggests that Whorf cannot be rightly understood without the contemporary intellectual and biographical context, these details will only be consulted if they are absolutely essential to understand the hypothesis or its implications on the linguistic field (2002, p. 105).
1
John E. Josephs indicates that the term itself is debatable “coined by Whorf’s protégé John B. Carroll” (Joseph, 2002, p. 72). For the sake of simplicity I am going to use the term “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” since it is the most prevailing and still used in academics. Furthermore, linguistic relativity will be used synonymously with the SWH.
1
Many luminaries from different academic fields wrote about the relationship between language and thought centuries before Sapir and Whorf. However, the intellectual pioneers will be only shortly mentioned with an emphasis on Sapir and his foundations for Whorf’s elaboration, before I attempt to provide a clear definition of the SWH. A critical review of Whorf’s reception will be the second focus of the paper in addition with empirical studies of the SWH. Particularly, the vague distinction of the weak/strong form of the hypothesis will be illuminated as well as the terms “linguistic determinism” and “linguistic relativity” explained. Finally, I will integrate the SWH in present-day linguistics to illustrate the chances and limitations of these ideas, especially the network model of lexical access by Bock and Levelt will serve to shine a new light on the linguistic relativity.
II.
The Idea Whorf based his own writings about the linguistic relativity principle greatly on
Sapir’s thoughts. Having established a solid overview of Sapir’s perspective, it is comparatively easy to understand Whorf’s further elaboration. Lee (1996) explains it as follows: “Whorf’s ideas themselves form a complex interweaving whole, so Sapir’s influence penetrates every strand of his thinking […]” (p.23). Their writings have caused a great uproar in the academic world, thus it is essential to be very accurate with the sources, but first of all the historical background of the SWH is displayed. Already Sapir noticed that his ideas are not revolutionary and thus “he would [then] be spared the humiliating discovery that many new ideas, many apparently brilliant philosophic conceptions, are little more than rearrangements of familiar words in formally satisfying patterns” (Sapir, 1924, p. 174). a) History Whorf formulated the “linguistic relativity theory” in the 1930s, but he was not the first to write about the relationship of thoughts and language. Schlesinger dates the first mentions of such relations back to Francis Bacon in the 16th century (Schlesinger, 1991, p. 12), while philosophers even trace those ideas back to the antiquity (Preston, 1997, p. 1).2 It was not the novelty of such ideas that the SWH was named after Whorf, but his hyperbolic writing style, radicalism and “the prevailing intellectual climate of the time” made him the most popular representative (Schlesinger, 1991, p. 24). Nevertheless, there is a scientific consensus – one of the few - that Wilhelm von Humboldt majorly influenced Sapir and Whorf (Koerner, 1990; Lehmann, 1998; Schlesinger, 1991; Wenzel, 2010). Wilhelm von Humboldt 2
Lehmann offers a very good schematic overview in his book ROT ist nicht “rot” ist nicht [rot] for the intellectual forerunners and influences on the language/thought relationship (p. 48).
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expressed his ideas of thought and language in the 19th century and provided the blueprint for the future SWH: “Die Sprache ist das bildende Organ des Gedanken. […] Die intellectuelle Thätigkeit und die Sprache sind daher Eins und unzertrennlich von einander; man kann nicht einmal schlechthin die erstere als das Erzeugende, die andre als das Erzeugte ansehen“ (Humboldt, 1963, p. 191).3 Only Josephs disagrees with this consent and suggests that Sapir’s work was inherently distinct of Humboldt’s thesis and even argues against the “Romantic notions of an affinity between language structure and level of cultural advancement […]”(Joseph, 2002, p. 73). Nevertheless, he further emphasizes that Sapir has been much neglected in the discussion of the SWH. Edward Sapir was an exceptional linguist and mentor of Benjamin Whorf at Yale. Thus, there is naturally a strong correlation between their ideas, publications and mentality. His essential contributions to the SWH cannot be neglected especially since Sapir majorly influenced Whorf with his ideas of the correlation between language and thought. According to Lehman (1998), he proposed two principles which have become essential for Whorf’s linguistic relativity: (1)
Thought is clearly dependent on language
(2)
The grammar of language defines the relationship between thought and language (not the lexicon).
In fact, Sapir constituted this dependency already in 1928 in his article The Status of Linguistic as a Science: Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality (p. 221).
He further adds to the first principle that all humans and thus languages share a common ground of universal experience. Sapir uses the example of literature to demonstrate this point (Sapir, 1921, pp. 237–238, 1928, pp. 221–222). We are able to translate Shakespeare into German and Goethe into English by paraphrasing the content; however we are not able to have a one-to-one conversion: Metaphors, rhymes and allusions are lost in the translation because literature is also “at the mercy of the particular language” and thus can only fully
3
Language is the constituting organ of thought. […] The intellectual performance and language are one and the same being inseparable of each other; one cannot distinguish which is the cause and the consequence of the other [my own translation].
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understood, if one speaks the language.4 Lehman (1998) suggests that Sapir used a prestructuralist model of the “deep-structure” / “surface structure” dichotomy to explain linguistic relativity by the example of literature rendering the translation argument redundant.5 The second principle is as fundamental as the first, but has been rather neglected or obscured in the reception of Sapir. One of the most famous examples for the SWH is the different terminology of snow in English and Inuit, who apparently have a significant amount of terms for snow.6 However, Sapir argues that not the vocabulary determines the way members of a certain social group think, but merely about what. Thus, empirical evidences of lexical differences are mostly irrelevant for the SWH because “this superficial and extraneous kind of parallelism is of no real interest to the linguist […]” (Sapir, 1921, p. 234). The grammar of a language is the key to the relativity of thought. While lexical differences can be overcome by different techniques, the “fixed habits of speech” determine our way of thinking. “All Languages are set to do all the symbolic and expressive work that language is good for, either actually or potentially. The formal technique of this work is the secret of each language” (Sapir, 1924, p. 172). Sapir uses the example of the stone falls to illustrate his point: In German and French the stone has to be gendered, while in Russian stone does not have to be specified at all. Completely different is the Nootka language, which does not have a noun stone, but uses a verb describing the motion of a stone: A approximate translation would be to stone down (Sapir, 1924, pp. 175–76). According to Sapir, those differences define the linguistic relativity principle. b) Definition Whorf formulated the “linguistic relativity principle” across all of his writings. Penny Lee (1996) suggests that the four articles Science and linguistics, Linguistics as an exact science, Language and logic, and Language, mind and reality constitute the core of the SWH (p. 122). “We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.” Whorf hold the same believe as Sapir that every human experience the world differently by their “linguistic 4
See the chapter “Language and Literature” in Language: An introduction to the study of speech for further evidence and explanations. 5 The notion of critics to brand the SWH as linguistic determinism will be discussed in the next chapter after a concrete definition has been established. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Sapir relativized the relationship of language and thought himself, which is mostly neglected by critics as Lehman (1998, p. 23) mentions. 6 „There are about as many definitions, more properly termed interpretations, for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis as there are Inuit terms for snow (see how easy it is to use this cliché!)”(Steckley, 2008, p. 55). The “Inuit term for snow” argument is as obscure as the reception of the SHW itself and thus should be rather avoided for the SWH debate. See “White Lies about the Inuit” by Steckley (2008) for a detailed analysis.
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background”. At first sight, this seems to be a rather vague exclamation, but Whorf elaborated on the two principles of Sapir in more detail and offers a very distinct definition of linguistic relativity.7 Whorf’s major contribution to linguistic relativity principle is twofold. Firstly, he defines which kind of experience is determined by language. Secondly, he proposes how language influences thought and perception. By the use of Jung’s Gestaltpsychologie Whorf distinguishes two ways of thinking: “Isolates of experience” and “isolates of meaning”. The former is rather a form of segmenting reality than a process of thinking (Lee, 1996, p. 118): “Isolates of experience” are a non-linguistic framework to categorize reality, which is universal to every human being and naturally independent of language (Lee, 1996, pp. 96– 122; Whorf, 1939, pp. 163–64). On the other hand, “isolates of meaning” are concepts in the mind of a speaker (thoughts), “which differentially operationalize them [isolates of experience] in culturally specific ways to create the meaning making resources of particular languages. This contrast is the core of the linguistic relativity concept […]” (Lee, 1996, p. 122).
Figure 1: I clean it (gun) with the ramrod. The explanation is rather misleading: The three isolates are “isolates of meaning”, the concepts in our mind, reporting the same isolate of experience “I clean it (gun) with the ramrod” (Whorf, 1940b, p. 208).
7
However, note that the definition of the linguistic principle is spread across several articles and only combined they constitute the mentioned "clear" definition.
5
Figure 1 illustrates the difference between English and Shawnee for the isolate of experience “I clean it (the gun) with a ramrod”. Both the speaker of English and the speaker of Shawnee experience the same event, but their way of expressing it differs essentially since the “isolates of meaning” are different and thus their thought pattern. I propose that the “network model of lexical access” according to Bock and Levelt (1994) essentially facilitates the understanding of Whorf’s “isolates of meaning” construction. The conceptual level is the “isolate of meaning”. They might be linguistic or non-linguistic, but the speaker has a concept in his mind of a phenomenon in the real world (Bock & Levelt, 1994, p. 952; Lee, 1996, p. 126). The “isolate of experience” is the external world surrounding the speaker, who can only make sense of the world by using his individualized network model and “isolates of meaning” to categorize this experience for comprehension.
Figure 2: Network model (Bock & Levelt, 1994, p. 951)
Furthermore, incorporating the network model by Bock and Levelt also clarifies the importance of grammar for the linguistic relativity principle. All syntactic information is stored on the LEMMA level of an item, the link between CONCEPT and LEXEME (graphic or oral realization) level. Conclusively, the LEMMA level differs between languages since they obviously have different grammars. For instance, the English verb’s “subcategorization
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frame” dictates that monotransitive verbs take a subject and an object or the conjugation according to tense (Bock & Levelt, 1994, pp. 950–51). In Hopi, the native American language Whorf extensively analyzed and used in several examples to illustrate the linguistic relativity, the conception of time is entirely different and thus the Hopi verb’s subcategorization frame differs (Whorf, 1940b, pp. 212–13). Whorf (1940) concluded inductively on his empirical research on Hopi speech the following: Formulation of ideas is not an independent process, strictly rational in the old sense, but is part of a particular grammar, and differs, from slightly to greatly, between different grammars. […] the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux if impression which has to be organized by our minds – and this means largely by the linguistic system in our minds ( p. 213).
In this regard, the grammar (LEMMA) determines partly the “isolates of meaning” (CONCEPT).8 Furthermore, Whorf analyzed language in terms of patternment across all domains: Phonology, syntax, pragmatics and syntax. He proposed that each language is constructed by a certain patternment in every aspect. For example, to create a proper English syllable the speaker abides by the rules of the English phonotactics. Whorf remarks that even children’s babbling in their first steps of speech production adhere to those patternments (Whorf, 1940a, p. 224).9 Furthermore, Lehman suggests that Whorf has developed the idea of “deep structure” and “surface structure” long before the American structuralism through his model of patternment (Lehmann, 1998, pp. 35–37). “The different tongues are the real phenomena and may generalize down not to any such universals as ‘language’, but to something better – called ‘sublinguistics’ or ‘superlinguistics’ […]” (Whorf, 1941, p. 239). Thereby, he supports the notion of Sapir and distinguishes between a superlinguistic (surface structure), which is specific for each language and a sublinguistic (deep structure), which is universal to all languages.10 The linguistic relativity according to Whorf based on Sapir has been clarified now, however additional features introduced by Whorf have to be mentioned before a final definition is given. Firstly, the student contradicted his mentor in regard of the lexical level and the relativity principle. Whorf admits that semantics does play a background role, but is still a factor influencing the thinking process. However, he explicitly emphasizes that the syntagmatic relationship between words is important: The patterns in which certain words
8
A more accessible, but simplified example is the difference between to have a swim in English and schwimmen gehen in German since swim/schwimmen is either a noun (in English) or a verb (in German). 9 Lee (1996) notes that this perspective of analyzing language has been very prominent in the first half of the 20th century in American Linguists, but has been neglected especially by cognitive linguistics since then (see p. 37) 10 Lehmann (1998) mentions Kryptotypes in this context. Whorf invented this term to describe grammatical categories, which are not realized by morphological or syntactic units such as the gender in English (p.37).
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occur (Lehmann, 1998, pp. 39–41).11 Secondly, not every expression is shaped by the relativity principle. Already Sapir mentions the notion that there is language without thinking, but no thinking without language (Lehmann, 1998, p. 22; Sapir, 1921, pp. 14–15).12
Figure 3: Thought-Language-Relation (Lehmann, 1998, p. 155)
Whorf further differentiates between thinking as “containing a large linguistic element of a strictly patterned nature” and feeling, which is “mainly nonlinguistic, though it may use the vehicle of language” (Whorf, 1936, p. 66). There are certain expressions, which are not controlled by our thought and language patterns, but by feelings, intuition or sensation. Thus, the initial principles of Sapir can be revised by the Whorfian features and the final result is the definition of the SWH: (1) Thought is clearly dependent on language a. There are universal experiences perceived by every human being identically called “isolates of experience”. However, the concepts in our mind called “isolates of meaning” shape the thinking process and thus how we perceive reality.
11
Corpus linguistics calls those patterns “collocations”. In my opinion, Whorf analyzed the colligation, semantic prosody and preference before those terms have been established in order to support his hypothesis. 12 Sapir uses the example of “I had breakfast this morning“ as an expression of language without thinking (Sapir, 1921, p. 13). In my opinion, there are enough examples of expressions without thinking and thus it is rather redundant to repeat them here.
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b.Thinking is to a large extent linguistic, but there many other mental activities, which are in our terms nonlinguistic, influencing language production. (2) The grammar of language defines the relationship between thought and language. a. The grammar of language and language in general are structured by patterns (or “fashions of speaking”), which influence the thinking process. b.The LEMMA level of language determines partly the “isolates of meaning” (CONCEPT) and thus the thinking process. c. The syntagmatic relationship between words also influences the thinking process. This definition of the SWH will be examined whether it can hold up to the many critics of the linguistic relativity principle. Furthermore, the boundaries of this hypothesis shall be highlighted with the evaluation of Sapir’s and Whorf’s critical reception.
III.
The critical reception “The Whorf hypothesis seems to bring out the worst in those who discuss it” (Ellis,
1993, p.53 qtd. in Lee, 1996, p.20). The record of Whorf’s critical reception is as remarkable as the SWH itself. Supporters and opponents of the linguistic relativity principle have been fighting for decades and still do. Nevertheless, the critical reception of the SWH in this paper should serve to reveal the limitations and chances of the hypothesis in order to effectively work with it rather illustrating the set of problems impeding the reception.13 However, it is necessary to confound a conventional assumption about the SWH, which has become nearly an elemental part of its linguistic discussion: The divide of the hypothesis in a weak and strong form. Some linguistic termed the weak form “linguistic relativity” and the strong form “linguistic determinism”. (Penn, 1972) has introduced those terms for the interpretation of the SWH and predetermined the analysis for many years. It has become a conventionality in the academic reception as a result of hasty readings.
13
There is enough secondary literature illustrating the problems of the reception of the SWH. For example, Lehmann (1998), Lee (1996) and (Gipper, 1972).
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a) Linguistic determinism “Linguistic determinism” is mostly defined as “all thinking goes on in language” (Schlesinger, 1991, p. 19). Thus, it is implicated that a speaker of language A can never understand a speaker of language B. As hasty as this interpretation of the SWH has been established, it was refuted by the same scholars. On the contrary, Lehmann (1996) suggests that this version was developed by linguists mostly relying on secondary literature with the intention to position themselves as representatives of a more moderate version of the SWH (p.31, p.98-99). It is easy to falsify this reading of the SWH since one can blame Whorf for contradicting himself. Furthermore, empirical research is not even necessary. There are common sense evidences confounding this version of the SWH: Translation and communication between two speakers of a different native language would be impossible (Black, 1959, p. 232; Macnamara, 1991, p. 48; Penn, 1972, p. 33; Pinker, 2007, pp. 53–54; Schlesinger, 1991, pp. 19–20). According to the definition of the SWH stated in the previous chapter, “linguistic determinism” as a form of the linguistic relativity principle is beyond doubt inaccurate. While Sapir (1921) already relativized the relationship between thought and language in his only book “Language”, a careful reading of Whorf’s articles about human perception (isolates of experience) urges a relativistic reading of the SWH (1941, p. 239). Thus, translation and communication is naturally possible in the model of the linguistic relativity, however there might occur certain problems as misunderstandings or one-to-many correspondences in translation.14 Furthermore, Whorf clearly distinguishes between thinking as a linguistic process, which is determined largely by the native language, and expressions independent of linguistic processes (1936, p. 66). In conclusion, we can debunk the obscure term “linguistic determinism” or the corresponding “strong form” and attend to the more sound criticism of the SWH. b) Empirical research Lenneberg (1953) established a methodology towards testing the SWH, which became the most famous case study in the reception of Whorf:15 The lexical coding of color in different languages. Even though Lenneberg developed an almost solid case study, it is
14
See ( nig ast, 2009) for an example of translation problems between German and English. Those problems even occur between very similar languages. 15 Note that Lenneberg wrote his article Cognition in Ethnolinguistics (1953) before all writings of Whorf has been published (1956). Thus, it is reasonable that he had different understanding of Whorf, though an insightful.
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important to note that his reading of Whorf is flawed in three aspects as Lucy (1992b) points out.16 Nevertheless, (Lenneberg, 1953) draws attention to the shortcoming of the SWH: However, a demonstration that certain languages differ from each other suggests but does not prove that the speakers of these languages differ from each other as a group in their psychological potentialities. To prove this, it would be necessary to show first that certain aspects of language have a direct influence on or connection with a given psychological mechanism, or at least that speakers of different languages differ along certain psychological parameters (p.63).
This natural conclusion highlights several questions, which still remain unclear in the definition of the SWH established before: 1. Which psychological mechanisms are influenced by language, if it all? 2. Is there any empirical research proving the influence of language on psychological mechanisms? To which extent can color coding support the SWH? 3. Do new insights of linguistics as the network model help to support the SWH? The catch of the first question is that it is impossible to set up a study to determine which psychological mechanisms are influenced by language in general. An empirical research can only pick out one mechanism as color coding or gendering and analyze whether language use influence it. Thus, we can only judge inductively whether the SWH can be falsified. It is also important to keep in mind that falsifying the relationship between language and one psychological mechanism, does not automatically implies a falsification of the SWH. There might be relationships in different domains of the mind. As mentioned before the color coding is the most prominent example of empirical research regarding the SWH. In the original Lenneberg & Brown experiment of 1954 subjects had to determine terms for 24 different colors in English. It was measured how easily (length, duration and match between subjects) the subjects were capable to name the colors. This unit was called codability (See (Lucy, 1992b, pp. 157–58). Afterwards the subjects had to recognize those 24 colors out of 120 colors in sets of 4. The result was a correlation between codability and recollection of English Speakers. In a subsequent study the experiment was realized cross-linguistically with Zuni-Indians approving the relationship between cognition (recollecting capability) and language (Lehmann, 1998, p. 168).17 Lucy (1992b) remarks that Lenneberg “psychologized” the SWH to support his color coding experiments right and shifted the emphasis on processing instead of the relationship 16
See Lucy (1992b, p. 127-35) for an explanation of the flawed reading by Lenneberg. For our interest, only the suggested improvements are of importance. 17 Note that Berlin & Kay (1969) confuted these results with their color coding experiment. See Lehmann (1998, p. 169-181) and Lucy (1992b, p. 177-187) for more details. However, for this paper other drawbacks of the original color coding experiments are more significant.
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between language and thought (p. 129). Furthermore, color coding experiments have two major shortcomings in respect to the SWH. First, those studies are merely examining the lexical level of language, which is according to Whorf the least important for the linguistic relativity principle.18 Second, color coding has to be analyzed in terms of pragmatics and syntagmatics in order to measure “fashions of speaking” (patternment in language) (Lehmann, 1998, p. 165). Lehmann (1998) extensively explored all variants of color coding experiments and came to the conclusion that color terms are individually, situational and cultural specific.19 Thus, color terms have to be analyzed according to their use in language instead of codability or cognition alone. The chapter of color coding experiments in relation to the SWH is not finished yet and therefore no final conclusion can be made whether it supports the SWH, which aspects it sustains or whether it suggests a totally different model. Nevertheless, there are two further studies, which apparently support the SWH in a more straightforward manner. The first experiment deals with non-verbal two-digit number processing. Subjects of three different languages, German, Italian and Czech have been tested how fast they could differentiate the larger one of a pair of two-digit numbers in their native language (Pixner, Moeller, Hermanova, Nuerk, & Kaufmann, 2011). The interesting aspect for the SWH is that German grammar inverts the words for the numbers (21 -> “Einundzwanzig”), Italian does not (21 -> “ventuno”), and Czech uses both forms in everyday language (21 -> “dvadset jeden” or “jeden-a-dvadset”). The prediction was that German speaking subjects would need more time than Italian speaking subjects since the incongruity between verbal and digital notation impedes the processing, while the result of the Czech speaking subjects could not be predicted. Indeed, the result was that German speakers needed more time than Italian speakers to select the larger two-digit number, while Czech speakers did solidly better than German speakers and slightly worse than Italian speakers (Pixner et al., 2011, p. 379). Conclusively, this study suggests that the patternment or grammar of one’s native language influences cognitive functions such as number magnitude processing. This experiment illustrates exemplarily that the correlation between language and cognition exists for certain processes in the mind. However, it does not demonstrate that concepts in our mind are shaped by the grammar of our native language. A study by (Khosroshahi, 1989) about the “generic he” and suggestion of a male referent in the mind shows how our language shapes the concepts in our mind: 18
See (Lucy, 1992a) for a comparative study of cognition and grammatical categories between Yucatec and English. 19 See (Lindsey & Brown, 2002)), who illustrated that the color blue is termed dark or green in high UV-areas because of correlation between color naming and UV dosage, which leads to accelerated aging of the eye and thus different perception capability.
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A father and his son are out driving. They have an automobile accident. The father is killed, and the son is rushed to the hospital and prepared for operation. The doctor comes in, sees the patient, and exclaims, "I can't operate on this patient, it's my son!" (p.505).
Many people would be puzzled by this problem, even though it can be solved by a simple explanation: The doctor is the mother of the child. However, the term doctor is linked with a male gender by most English speakers. Whorf called those grammatical categories, which are not realized by morphemes or syntactic units, Kryptotypes (Whorf, 1936, pp. 68–70). Those
ryptotypes shape our “isolates of meaning” /
concepts in the mind and thus influence the thinking process. Furthermore, the study revealed more insights about SWH, but the experiment itself has to be explained first. Subjects had to read six different paragraphs, which could include either the possessive third person generic pronoun his, her or his, and singular their. The paragraphs itself were made to be as sex-neutral as possible.20 Moreover, the language use was analyzed whether they used traditional language (usage of generic he) or reformed language (usage of he or she, (s)he, s/he, generic she). It is essential to know that the subjects were 55 (28 women, 27 men) Harvard students and their language use were determined by their gendering in their term papers.21 The results showed that “men did not differ in their imagery, whether their language was reformed or traditional, [but] women did” (Khosroshahi, 1989, p. 505). This implies that the SWH is specific to various features of an individual, even if they are part of the same language community.22 If gender can influence the concepts in our mind, so could age, education or social origin. Furthermore, these results insinuate that by changing our language, we can change our thought patterns. The linguistic relativity principle is not only relativized by language, but also by the features of every human being. Furthermore, the study indicates that by modifying our language, we can change the concepts in our mind. This might merely be a vague idea, but it offers a new perspective of linguistic relativity as an opportunity and not as a limitation.
IV.
Conclusion The linguistic relativity principle is in general a possibility and not a boundary for the
human mind and linguistic research. Many linguists interpreted Whorf’s ideas hostilely because they might have been biased about the misleading versions of the SWH such as the 20
See (Khosroshahi, 1989) for examples. Naturally, the sample characteristics (sociodemographic and educational bias) and the size of the study skew the results. Thus, the conclusions have to be made with caution. 22 This argument is even supported by the biased sample of the study. If we have individual differences in such a sample, how great would be the difference in language and thinking in a study of greater extent. 21
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linguistic determinism fallacy. Thus, the hypothesis has also found no support of any linguistic faction (Cognitivists, Universalists, or Chomskyans) (Lehmann, 1998, pp. 98–99). However, I suggest that the SWH has to be reevaluated in the light of a modern definition as provided in the second chapter and a constructive approach. The linguistic relativity offers the opportunity to establish connections between the different models. For example, the concept of patternment combines the deep structure / surface structure idea of the Chomskyans with the generalization commitment of the Cognitivists. In fact, Whorf formulated many essential concepts for linguistic before they have been generally established and accepted such as the phonotype23 nowadays called allophones. The SWH shows certain disadvantages, which can be accredited to Whorf’s rather unmethodical writings. He never stated a clear definition of linguistic relativity himself, but only explained features of it scatted all over of his publications. Thus, it is comprehensible that every scholar has a different interpretation of the SWH, depending on the writings he read of Whorf. The version of the SWH in this paper is also merely another attempt of clarifying. I emphasized different aspects of the SWH as other linguists would. Consequently, there is probably not one particular definition of the linguistic relativity as the oversimplified version of the Oxford English Dictionary stated in the introduction, but many intersections between them. The most remarkable approach to the SWH in this paper is the combination with the network model of lexical access since it eases the understanding of the linguistic relativity and widens the scope of the model. The derivation of “isolates of experience” and “isolates of meaning” through Jung’s Gestaltpsychologie is rather arduous to grasp, but the network model of Bock and Levelt for example straps the SWH of this complicated layer. In return, the linguistic relativity principle adds another dimension of meaning to the network model. Therefore, it is worthwhile to reflect upon the SWH through the new insights of modern linguistic. Since Sapir already remarked “many new ideas, many apparently brilliant philosophic conceptions, are little more than rearrangements of familiar words in formally satisfying patterns” (Sapir, 1924, p. 174).
23
The phonological counterpart to Kryptotypes (Lee, 1996, p. 46; Lucy, 1992b, p. 27)
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